go ahead and destroy this

SHOWS I LIKED THIS YEAR

1. The Americans (FX)
2. Fargo (FX)
3. Review (Comedy Central)
4. How the Universe Works (Science)
5. Silicon Valley (HBO)
6. Nathan for You (Comedy Central)
7. Mad Men (AMC)
8. Chopped (Food Network)
9. BoJack Horseman (Netflix)
10. True Detective (HBO)
11. Community (NBC)
12. The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
13. Veep (HBO)
14. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX)
15. Comedy Bang! Bang! (IFC)
16. The Walking Dead (AMC)
17. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (ABC)
18. South Park (Comedy Central)

SHOWS THAT WERE JUST OKAY

19. Parks and Recreation (NBC)
20. Louie (FX)
21. Archer (FX)
22. 60 Minutes
23. Bob's Burgers (FOX)
24: Live Another Day (FOX)
25. Homeland (Showtime)
26. Masters of Sex (Showtime)
27. Halt and Catch Fire (AMC)
28. Maron (IFC)

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
- Voltaire

It took me a little while to warm up to it, but I finally like Twitter, strictly as a joke- and link-delivery system. I don’t think it works as well for other purposes – as a medium for dialogue, as public memoir, as a tableau for philosophical argument – because there just isn’t enough room. Not enough room for nuance, or caveat, or even pauses to let things sink in.

And when time and space are at a premium, people are forced to assert things confidently, without equivocation. They appear certain. And nothing drives me more furiously crazy than rhetorical certainty.

Faith is one thing; faith is not a substitute for reason but I still admire the faithful. I pity the certain, because one must be awfully stupid to think themselves that smart. No one is that smart.

…

When people who don’t live and work in Washington, DC, learn that I live and work in Washington, DC, they invariably ask me about politics. I suppose this is natural. If I met an Italian, I would ask him or her about Italy; if I met Justin Bieber, I would ask him about shitty music.

And I can speak competently about the general mood within the corridors of power here, and in some cases the assumptions underlying that mood. For a city with so many secrets, there sure are a lot of people talking. You can’t help but be at least a little bit of an expert. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Washington is the only place in the universe where sound travels faster than light.”

But when people ask me what I think of the presidential election, I’m always at a loss for what to say, for two reasons:

First, on a short-term, practical level, I don’t think it makes much difference who wins. For better or worse, I don’t expect very much to change, because Obama and Romney are more alike than they are different. While grand pronouncements and bedrock principles are ostensibly what get a president elected, I think both of these guys are closet pragmatists. It’s the most apt description of Obama’s approach to domestic and foreign policy, in which he has repeatedly sought (if not necessarily found) consensus. It also explains why Romney appears to vacillate between conservative firebrand and avuncular moderate.

Even if there were stark differences between the two men, I’m not sure it would matter, because the presidency just isn’t that big a deal. The bully pulpit has devolved into a bulls-eye. As Michael Lewis writes in a remarkable Vanity Fair piece on Obama:

He admits that he has been guilty, at times, of misreading the public. He badly underestimated, for instance, how little it would cost Republicans politically to oppose ideas they had once advocated, merely because Obama supported them. He thought the other side would pay a bigger price for inflicting damage on the country for the sake of defeating a president. But the idea that he might somehow frighten Congress into doing what he wanted was, to him, clearly absurd. “All of these forces have created an environment in which the incentives for politicians to cooperate don’t function the way they used to,” he said.

It’s really rather remarkable that we’ve gone so quickly from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who assiduously worked to expand the reach and power of the executive office, to Barack Obama, who seems to have abdicated most of it. And I can’t figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, or if it was intentional or inadvertent, or if he had any agency in it at all or whether it was starved by obstructionist opposition.

There are really only three things over which the President has any control, anymore. But I’ll get to those later. The point is that no matter who wins, we’re probably screwed/OK (depending on your point of view) either way.

Second, on a grand-design, philosophical level, all political campaigns are pretty much bullshit.

I look at elections the way my wife must look at professional football – a noisy ruckus, enamored with its own esoteric complexity and arcane rules, populated by an endless hierarchy of coaches, coordinators, cross-checkers, specialists, statisticians, Davids, Goliaths and glamor-boys. It’s a closed society, with its own language and traditions, and famously nepotistic. There is a dedicated media-entertainment complex built around it, with the seemingly contradictory mission of building mythology while exposing hypocrisy. Fanatic true-believer nutjobs abound, with vulgar invective and sudden violence a persistent threat. Issues of race, drugs, crime and health care occasionally flare up and threaten to overwhelm the game itself. Economic inequality seems to be a constant problem, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that there is such a shitload of money at stake – such that if it were its own company it would be one of the largest in the world. And yet it does nothing, produces nothing but winners and losers, year after year, before wiping the slate clean and immediately starting all over again.

At the center of all that, there must be something noble and pure, perhaps even inspiring. But I’ll be damned if I can see it anymore.

I happen to enjoy watching professional football very much. But I have the luxury of knowing that the NFL is a transparently upfront transaction: my money and attention in exchange for action and entertainment. The NFL wants as many viewers as possible. Political campaigns, however, only need so many votes and are free to disregard the margin. Why would they bother giving me anything?

So I’m not sure if I’ll vote at all in the 2012 election. Given the statistical insignificance of my individual presidential vote, it seemed like a relatively pointless exercise even when there was another actual state or local lawmaker on the ballot.

I’m going to have to paraphrase an excerpt from A. Whitney Brown’s The Big Picture: An American Commentary, because I can’t find it online anywhere and I long ago lent my copy to my 11th grade American History teacher (Mr. White), who never gave it back. Anyway:

It used to be that the United States was up to its frilly collar in quality presidential candidates. You could go to the ballot box, check one name or the other, and you knew you’d be okay for the next four years. Then, sometime around the time of John Quincy Adams, it came to be a distinct choice between the better of two options. Soon voters were voting for the guy they disliked the least. Eventually voters began voting against the guy they disliked the most.

It’s easy to posit that the forests of presidential timber have been barren for a while now. But I think it’s easier to lay blame at the feet of a political system that has cravenly synthesized candidates and commoditized voters. “Political science” has always been a misnomer, because – as I described before – politics isn’t a science, it’s a bloodsport.

At best, politics is an exercise in the Heisenberg Uncertainty (there’s that word again) Principle, which states that any experiment is spoiled by your participation in it. Which brings me back to voting.

As a resident of the District of Columbia, I pay federal income tax. But my elected representatives are denied voting rights in Congress. If my opinion as a taxpaying citizen is to be heard on a federal matter of interest – a bill, or law, or a regulation, or a statement of administration policy – the most effective strategy would literally be for me to shout it from my balcony.

That’s a problem. Obviously there is a basic constitutional roadblock to the remediation of the issue – D.C. is not a state. Many strategies have been proposed, from D.C. statehood to retrocession of the district by Maryland. Others have suggested the contrapositive approach of exempting D.C. residents from federal income tax. I confess that I don’t really grasp the specific practical or constitutional challenges presented by each proposal. I don’t really have a preference between any of these approaches and I have little confidence that anyone will ever do anything about it. There is too much investment in the status quo.

But the Democrats get my support on this matter if only because I believe their self-interest – the D.C. delegation, if it ever existed, would constitute a reliably Democratic voting bloc – is parallel with my own desire for congressional representation. Of course, even then – given the district’s political history – it would probably come down to a choice between entrenched corrupt Democrats, which would make me cynical about voting all over again.

But if I was voting this year, I think I would probably vote for President Obama. My reasons are noticeably less lofty than they were four years ago:

As I mentioned above, there are really only a few things that a president can really control anymore. One of them is foreign policy, where I think Obama has acquitted himself appropriately, if imperfectly. It worries me that Romney emulates George W. Bush’s “Buckaroo Diplomacy.” I’m not a geopolitical expert but I’m pretty sure that the reality in Asia and the Middle East is incredibly complicated, even more than you or I could possibly know, and the way to quell that sort of brinksmanship is not to go over there and start slapping people with your dick.

Another thing the president can control is the judicial nomination process, particularly for the Supreme Court. People like to chirp a lot about judicial activism and judicial restraint, but it seems to me that the real danger is the intrusion of policy preferences and party orthodoxy into jurisprudence – for the Democratic and the Republican appointees. Given the rapid desiccation of left-leaning Justices Ginsburg (age 79), Breyer (76) and Kennedy (74), it seems preferable to maintain ideological balance on the court. (Justice Scalia, at 76, is in no danger of exiting the court, as vampires have been known to live for many centuries.)

And the other thing the president can control is his cabinet and executive branch agencies. If there’s a failing grade on his report card, this is where I would mark it. His attorney general and secretary of energy have stumbled embarrassingly, and his secretaries of labor and HHS haven’t always acquitted themselves gracefully, either. While the Obama Administration’s legislative strategy has been largely conciliatory, its regulatory attitude (with the notable exception of Treasury/IRS) has been openly hostile toward the regulated. A second term probably won’t be any better. But a Romney Administration could well swerve sharply toward deregulation, which might be just as bad.

If, however, we continue with the premise that the presidents are, individually, largely ineffectual, we have to consider the partnerships they forge. Inevitably, at least to some extent, every moderate is held hostage by the radical elements of their own party. I have no more love for the far-left fundamentalist wackos than I do for the far-right fundamentalist wackos – I blame both for totally screwing up the health care bill, not to mention immigration reform, the stimulus bill, etc.

But ultimately, if the president is going to be hamstrung by the extreme wing of his own party, it might as well be the extremists who care about people, rather than the ones who don’t believe in evolution.*

*Then again, if I spent any significant amount of time listening to Ann Coulter, I might come to doubt evolution, myself.

And finally we have to consider what each person’s election would represent. The image of Barack Obama as a transformative, post-racial, post-partisan political figure no longer exists, of course. That “high road” has been obliterated. So I look for other messages my vote could communicate.

A strong argument could be made for electing Mitt Romney as a way of holding Obama – and all lawmakers, by extension – to higher standards of responsibility and accountability, as if to say “you have to do better.” I mean, things are rough out there. Really rough. I'm not blind to that; Mitt's right, sometimes you have to fire people. But this message really only resonates if you oust all the incumbents, and for some reason that ain't happening.

But I think the better way to make that statement is to make clear to Republicans that attack and obstruction is not an advisable strategy for scoring political points, just as the 2004 presidential election chastened congressional Democrats and created an atmosphere more conducive to cooperation. Whereas a vote for Romney would be the equivalent of buying ice cream for a pouting child, a vote for Obama could be the broccoli they need to eat if they are go grow healthy and strong.

Biden is Laffy Taffy.

Mostly though, I just get the impression of Obama as a man who isn’t “certain.” You can knock him for that, if you want. Maybe you find something more reassuring about a president who is sure he’s right. Not me. I need a guy who considers all the possibilities. Who appreciates dissent. Who knows how smart he is, and isn’t.

I think Romney is an OK guy. I’ll let his words speak for him here:

“Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.”

…

There has been a demonization, of late, of the Undecided Voter, as if it’s a terrible thing to take every single word into consideration before making a choice. I realize this sort of contradicts my earlier argument that all campaigns are bullshit – “what’s the point in waiting for more information if campaigns distribute nothing but hogwash,” you may ask – but my point is that no one should be under any public obligation to make up their minds early. Besides, you never know when a candidate is going to screw up and accidentally say something honest.

People especially hate the “low-information” undecided voters, the ones who probably work hard all day at thankless jobs and don’t want to spend their precious leisure time watching two exquisitely coached men try to come up with creative and thoughtful new ways to call the other guy an asshole. I can’t really blame them for eschewing the news, which has its own depressing institutional defects, in favor of something less “real,” like the Kardashians.

I would vote for Obama, if I were voting. But I can admit that I’m not certain about it. I have friends and family, very smart people, whom I admire and respect – and who may be reading this – who I know support Mitt Romney. I know they have good reasons. This makes me nervous.

I have other friends and family who love their country and mean well – and who may be reading this – who despise Obama (and his policies, but mostly the man himself) so stridently and venomously, so reflexively and with such uncompromising conviction, that I feel compelled to retrench in opposition to their visceral hatred.

And I have other friends and family, whose compassion and patriotism are beyond reproach – and who may be reading this – who support Obama with such cock-eyed fervor and certitude that I kind of wish they didn’t agree with me. And I start to second-guess myself all over again.

Democracy is hard, man.

So you can call me undecided, but I prefer “uncertain.” #Obama2012

This piece was my runner-up. It’s clearly more of a traditional memoir than the macaroni & cheese piece and is probably the most “relatable” of my three drafts. A few people liked this one best, including my wife, and one other person who argued that its “pathos and bittersweetness … exert a stronger pull.”

Then again, one person found it rather pedestrian, saying, “I can't even get through [it] without checking my Facebook page every other word I'm so bored by it.”

This one eventually lost out because I thought the ending was kind of weak and the overall tone was more wistful than lighthearted.

The version below was edited to exceed the original 1,000 word limit (currently 1,076) and includes pictures..


This is going to sound like one of those stories about the crazy things that a guy will do for a girl. It’s true that I would never have been in that mess if not for The Girl, and it’s true that this was just the first in a series of events seemingly choreographed by The Girl to destroy me. But the real villain of this story is the spotlight, and how hot it burns.

In the summer after my junior year of college, I was smitten with a woman who held a leadership position on the alumni outreach club, the primary purpose of which is basically kissing up to major donors – the kind of dedicated philanthropists who endow professorships and have memorial urinals named after them.

Since I was pursuing my own special kind of “targeted outreach” to The Girl, I signed up as an auxiliary volunteer for the annual June “Thank You, Alumni! Say, We Could Really Use a New Podiatry Wing” Event. For me, this pretty much meant inconsequential jobs like stuffing gift bags and scheming possible places to sneak away and make out.

On Saturday afternoon, however, we were to host the keynote luncheon on the main quad and I was tasked with supporting the First Aid and cooling station. The temperature was expected to touch 95 degrees that day, with humidity approaching the consistency of plasma, and the organizers were concerned that some of the more elderly alumni might die before they had a chance to amend their wills. But before I had the chance to nurse any wealthy benefactors back to mere infirmity, The Girl came to me with a unique opportunity.

At the luncheon we were to unveil a brand-new costume for the university mascot, the Yellowjacket – a costume subsidized by alumni contributions. But the volunteer mascot performer was ill, or had perhaps melted in his car on the way over. “Would you be willing to fill in?” she asked. I quickly accepted, the way a dog quickly accepts a ride to the vet.

Not only was I saving The Girl’s day, but it was a chance to recapture the glory of my youth as a drama nerd. At the risk of immodesty, I confess I was a pretty big deal back in the day, bringing almost inappropriate levels of sensuality to the role of Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls.” But alas, after high school I was scared away from the collegiate theater program by all the cigarette smoking and artistic integrity.

My adrenaline surged as I imagined delivering the mascot performance of a lifetime, so impressing my audience that they would insist on repeat Yellowjacket performances, propelling me to a full-time Yellowjacket gig, which I would then parlay into a guest Yellowjacket appearance on a Sportscenter commercial and, ultimately, a successful run the U.S. Senate.

And then put on the brand-new costume for the first time.

The head alone was 25 pounds of thick fiberglass and black fur, attached a by body harness – like a giant athletic supporter – presumabily designed to stabilize the head for gymnastic maneuvers, linebacker collisions, etc. The Girl, along with the school’s alumni affairs representative, appeared baffled by the various bands and buckles as they strapped me in.

Then they wrapped me in a thick polyester-and-mohair jumpsuit, along with puffy yellow mittens and black slippers. Already the headpiece was getting stuffy, but I could see and breathe clearly enough through the black mesh eyeballs. And what I saw in the mirror was something less than the heroic image I had envisioned.



While I was nominally a “yellowjacket,” there was nothing at all fearsome about me, except possibly the long, pointed “stinger” protruding from my headpiece at eye level. I looked more like a fat bumblebee, a cross between “The Fly” and Jack-in-the-Box. The only sensuality I evoked was a mild itchy sensation.

The alumni affairs guy gave me three rules: (1) don’t break, tear, soil or otherwise damage the suit. (2) Absolutely no gestures that might be construed as lewd, violent, offensive or otherwise inconsistent with the university’s family-friendly mission and spirit. And (3), no talking, in keeping with mascot tradition, although onomatopoeic “buzzing” would be permitted.

They carted me out to the luncheon tent around dessert time with great fanfare. As the alma mater played, I sprinted down the aisle entreating high-fives from the alumni, who sat unmoved and mildly confused.

The Girl introduced me personally to several very important individuals and couples, to which I could only respond with enthusiastic pantomimes like “thumbs up!”, “put up your dukes!”, “my arms are crossed!” and “let’s do the Twist!”

The alumni response was tepid, perhaps because they were stuffed with salmon and actively hickory-smoking under the midday sun. Desperate to raise the energy level, I started dancing with some of the children in attendance.

My sweating quickly became more profuse and my breathing more labored as my dance moves slowed to the point where I was simply swaying back and forth. It wasn’t until I stopped dancing that I realized how dizzy I was. It gradually occurred to me that I might be in some physical danger, but out of actorial professionalism I was reluctant to vocalize it or gesticulate too wildly. The last thing I remember is raising my hand, as if to say “Hey, wait a minute.” Unfortunately, one of the larger, stronger kids misunderstood this as “High five!”

I woke up at the First Aid tent, with The Girl pouring cold water over me. It’s still unclear whether I had heat “stroke” or “exhaustion” or whatever; all I know is that I was so foul and sweaty, I couldn’t determine if I had in fact soiled the costume.

Glancing inside the giant helmet/death-mask steaming next to me, I saw a small black lump inside the crown. A closer look revealed a battery compartment and an on/off switch with the label “ventilation fan.” The Girl looked at me, said “Oops, sorry,” and smiled her get-out-of-jail-free smile.

We dated for a year or so after that and had some laughs. With her devious charm she my heart aflame, until the damned thing was burnt to cinders. It occurs to me now that our whole relationship – like my acting career – was born and died of too much heat.

Sadly, the heart has no ventilation fan. And some of us will just never be cool.

"Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on Earth, will escape punishment hereafter."
- Jessamyn West

So, the Washington Post recently sponsored a humor-memoir contest, no doubt the brainchild of humor columnist Gene Weingarten. The prize was publication in the Post and $1,000.

I didn't win.

And I've pretty much gotten over the fact that I didn't win. I felt pretty good about my entry, and confident – quite probably a little overconfident, given the amount of rejection that is built-in to contests like these, and writing in general, and life, when you really think about it.

And sure, it calls into question most of my presumptions about my writing skill, and more generally my purpose in this world, and to some extent even my core beliefs about who I am, not to mention the judgment of authors and comedy professionals I used to respect.

And yes, it's particularly disappointing given how hard I worked – quite probably a little too hard, given the odds and the relative triviality of this silly contest, compared to, say, my 401(k) plan or Libyan unrest – on my entry, taking the time to write and edit three totally different essays even though I knew I could only submit one of them. And I pestered more than a half-dozen friends to give me their feedback, all of it sincerely appreciated but retrospectively rather embarrassing.

After all that, not winning – not even hearing so much as an acknowledgement or rejection letter or even a spare curse word, actually – sucks. But since I don't want all that work to have been for nothing, I'll post those three drafts here over the next few days. My Facebook feed isn’t the Washington Post Magazine or anything, but it seems more likely to still be around in five years.

I won't ask anyone to give me $1,000, but if any of my fellow Washingtonians happen to see Gene Weingarten on the street, you could do me a solid and give him a wedgie for me, and we'll see if he thinks that's funny.

The Entries:
3. Now You’re Cooking
2. Love in the Wings
1. Falling ‘n’ Love

"The majority of men are bundles of beginnings" (Ralph Waldo Emerson)


The following trifle was inspired most directly by the recent marriage of my two friends Eric and Sara, but could just as well have been kindled by the simultaneous wedding of my cousins-in-law Jimmy and Amy, or my own two-year wedding anniversary, or any of the other approximately 217,000 couples that will get married this month (Source: CDC) NOTE: This was not a delivered toast; let’s think of it as a slice of something, toasted at home and eaten over the sink.


My high school public speaking teacher, Ms-no-period Hamm, has always said never to begin a speech with a joke, because you can't win: in the best-case scenario, you get a tsunami of laughter and the rest of your remarks can do nothing but disappoint thereafter. In the worst-case scenario, your joke runs aground and your audience abandons ship.

So perhaps the best way to begin is by jumping all the way to the end. This is convenient because weddings are designed to celebrate both beginning and ending – the end of two journeys and the beginning of another.

Marriage has always served as a bright line demarcating one chapter of life from another. In really ancient times, a teenaged girl might one day wake up to discover that she had been traded to her new husband for a goat. More recently – say, 70 years ago – a boy might graduate from high school one day and get married the next, move in together the day after, go away to defeat some Nazis and return, somehow, to a family of five.

And of course, this notion persists still, in a Game-of-Life sort of way. Perhaps too often we see ourselves as undistinguished blue or pink totems, crammed into a car that's not-quite-nice-enough, sputtering through life looking for specific exits and mile markers. On the game board, beginnings and endings are orderly and linear: school-work-marriage-children-retirement-death.

But the modern era has, if not removed those signposts, at least made the miles between them more complicated and interesting. Every day we make and travel new paths, invent new ways to get from X to Y to Z. So it is for all things, such as education, careers and love.

As new avenues arise, our options multiply and that simple, linear path starts to look like an interstate highway system. As we minimize the time and distance between points – the space between beginnings and endings – the world shrinks. And as the world shrinks, we frequently have nowhere to turn but our own heads.

What we lose in endurance, we are compensated with diversity. Limitless introspection begets limitless taxonomy, such that mere "courtship" now entails "smitten," "crushing," "hanging out," "pre-dating," "will-they-or-won't-they," "hooking up," "casually dating," "formally dating," "serious dating," "committed relationship," "co-habitation," "talking about marriage," "pre-engagement," "engagement," "wedding planning," "furious arguments about centerpieces" and "marriage." And not necessarily in that order.

Even and especially with all of these discrete subcategories, determining where one phase ends and another begins can be a challenge. And that’s just for one person; two individuals – even two individuals in love – move at their own speed and rythym. (Some with more rhythm than others.)

And so we have Sara and Eric, as with any two people, spinning around at different velocities, forwards, backwards and both at once, each with innumerable paths before them, through an infinite number of stages and sub-stages and all the usual unforeseen obstacles. The fact that anyone gets married to anyone, ever, is kind of a miracle. We have witnessed a miracle.

How did we get here?

We could go through the public record and find a few obvious landmarks. And surely Sara and Eric had their own private moments that pulled them in one direction or another. Their relationship progressed through its share of labels, but labels only describe the what, not the how. The process of falling in love is both gradual and sudden, and difficult to dissect.

Ernest Hemingway once described how people go bankrupt: “Slowly, then all at once.” (Bankruptcy, too, is a beginning and an end.)

The way I like to imagine it is to think about Eric’s many late nights driving back from concerts over the past few years, from Northampton to Hartford or Hartford to Northampton or to-and-from all the halls and clubs in between. I think about the freeways and side streets that he must be able to navigate in his sleep – that is to say instinctively, the product of muscle memory and momentum, as effortless as the indie rock soundtrack playing on the stereo.

It’s like a left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn, 40 miles of bad road, busted traffic light, left turn, right turn, and before you even know it: you're home.

Eventually, he just knew his way home. Call it gravity, divine intervention, The Force, whatever. Without even really thinking, he was transported over hills and valleys, knowing the way without having to read the signs, past all those mile markers, until he arrived to find that his journey was over and he had ended at the beginning. I’m sure Sara made a similar trip, following her own song of true love. And when Antonio Banderas wasn’t home, she settled for Eric.

And, with that joke, we are back where we started. Here’s to the beginning, and all the beginnings to come.

/clink

It’s not easy being "Greek."

It may be that membership in a fraternity or a sorority once conferred some kind of nobility to a college student, but those days are over. Greek Life is a relic, pre-dating the ages of individualism and information-sharing, from a time before everyone technocratically self-selected their own insular groups, back when “elite” was still a compliment.

From the beginning it was a strange choice for me to join Delta Upsilon Fraternity. Despite a surfeit of fond memories and friendships, I remain even today a little conflicted about my decision. It has always been like that one jacket you have in the corner of your closet: it fits just a little funny and it doesn’t really go with anything, so you only wear it out on certain occasions. But it keeps you warm and it has a lot of sentimental value, so you enjoy keeping it around.

As I sort out my fraternity experience, it always gets me to thinking about whether I put enough into it to get enough out of it, what I gained from it and what I can give back. Now, nearly a dozen years after my graduation, all I have to contribute are my thoughts about what the fraternity ultimately meant and means to me.

Every semester, for every ceremony in which the fraternal leaders initiate a new class of fraternity members, they dig up some old alumni to give a sort of commencement speech to the brotherhood – and the public, since Delta Upsilon is non-secret – called “The Charge.” It’s supposed to take the form of instruction or exhortation to the youngsters. I must admit that I can’t remember anything about the charge at my initiation, or who delivered it, so in the long run I suppose it’s not very consequential.

But it occurs to me that it would be the perfect venue in which to not only speak frankly about the benefits of college and brotherhood, but to unpack whatever general life wisdom I’ve accumulated thus far.

I was never very popular and I’ll never be famous. I didn’t have the prototypical Delta Upsilon experience and my tether to those days and those people is stretched thin, at best. I would never ask to speak and they would never think to invite me. This is not an entreaty or a fishing expedition.

It’s just a daydream. And this is what it would sound like:

* * * * *

Hello, everyone. My name is Jason Hammersla, 1999 graduate and member of Nu Class. I’d like to thank the brotherhood and alumni leadership for the invitation to speak here today and for the warm reception I’ve received.¹

I’m a native Rochesterian but I come here from Washington DC, where I’m the communications director for a modestly-sized trade association, working on health care and retirement savings policy. It is said that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”² I’m allergic to dogs, so I couldn’t be more pleased to be back here in my hometown and at my alma mater, where friends are easy to come by.

I should admit that in my time here I used to be known as a “satellite brother.” Perhaps this is still a familiar colloquialism; a satellite brother is one who is a part of the fraternity but never really at the center of what’s going on. They don’t live in the common housing, and they’re invisible at parties. They exist on the periphery: intermittently visible, vaguely exotic.

Satellites, by their nature, are held in the gravitational embrace of something larger than itself. And as gravity fades and their orbit expands, they gain the invaluable benefit of perspective. I speak to you today from 200,000 feet above sea level.

These are fractious times. Nowhere is this truer than in my adoptive home, our nation’s capital, where our duly elected representatives too readily employ the art of war to vilify their opponents, undermine their intentions and demonize their ideas. There is a vacuum of leadership in our world today, and nature abhors a vacuum.

So it is particularly heartening to consecrate and celebrate the ascension of these young men to a higher standard. For as much as a university education is an avenue for individual improvement, the university experience is about development as a member of civilized society. And the fraternal experience, at its marrow, is about development of men into leaders by example as well as by title. This is what the Rochester chapter proudly refers to as “building better men.”

I acknowledge that the word “man” and manhood have become bound up with, and weighted down by, conventional gender roles, pop psychology and quasi-Darwinian competition. For all its accumulated freight, people throw the word around capriciously. Be a man. Take it like a man. Stick it to the man. Man up. Man down. Man overboard. Who’s the man? You’re the man.³

For these purposes, at least, let us think about the word “man” in a broader way – as a simple abbreviation of the word “human.” And in that light, the existential inquiry becomes even more profound: what kind of man am I? What kind of man am I going to be?⁴

Under this roof we try to answer those questions through the advocacy of certain key principles, as espoused in The Cornerstone, Delta Upsilon’s Guide to College and Beyond:

- The Promotion of Friendship
- The Development of Character
- The Diffusion of Liberal Culture, and
- The Advancement of Justice

There is an old Hebrew word some of you may have heard before, “shibboleth.” Its original, literal translation is some kind of “grain plant,” but it is now commonly used a reference to an Old Testament story in which the people of Giliad used the word as a means of identifying trespassers from Ephraim. The Ephramite dialect didn’t include the “sh” sound, so when the Gileadites asked them to pronounce the word, it came out “thibboleth,” and so they were promptly drowned in a nearby river. And so “shibboleth” has come to mean “a practice or saying that is uniquely distinctive of a certain group.”

The four principles are your new shibboleth, not so much guidelines as they are prerequisites of fellowship. This is why we have no need for a secret handshake. If you didn’t believe in these things already, you would not be here now.

But there is another part of the Delta Upsilon canon that sets forth a more prescriptive set of ideals, as described in the associate member manual and passed down for generations from big to little brothers. They are as follows:

- A Delta U must be an introspective man.
- A Delta U must be a thinking man.
- A Delta U must be creative man.
- A Delta U must be a man of action.

And we take this to heart. Often, we end up inadvertently “choosing” our favorite of these labels, whether to justify our predispositions or rectify our perceived weaknesses. I always found it amusing that guys seem to fixate on that last one, “a man of action.” Everybody always wanted to be a “man of action,” probably because it sounds the sexiest, most like a stud or a superhero. “A man of action.” That’s Bruce Willis, John Wayne, Teddy Roosevelt. It is, I suppose, the most manly of these men. Nobody ever got laid by being an introspective man.

Believe me.

But eventually, you come to learn that this is obviously a false choice. They’re all the same person.

You can’t be an introspective man without being a thinking man, because then what are you doing? Introspection without thought – whether it’s getting high or getting lost – is no better than sleep.

You can’t really be a thinking man without being a creative man, because it’s the creativity that allows you to stretch boundaries, to challenge conventions and ask “what if.” As Delta Upsilon Brother and two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling once said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

You can’t be a creative man without being a man of action, because it takes work and will and determination to bring about creation.

And action without introspection? That’s just being a spaz.⁵

So: introspective man, thinking man, creative man, man of action – this is not a menu, or a checklist. It’s a roadmap, with each step compelling you to the next. Congratulations to you, my newest brothers, for taking your first step on this path. You are to be commended for their perseverance in reaching this point.

Perhaps your decision to join Delta Upsilon has not come without cost. Sacrifice is a part of any life choice, but it is another guiding principle of this house that we do not ask any person to surrender their self-respect. Assuming this is the same non-hazing chapter of the same non-secret fraternity that I left behind, they have not had to endure the stereotypical – and, hopefully, antiquated – indignities and humiliations we instinctively associate with the fraternity system.

Indeed, as some of the more insidious elements of fraternal life have been purified by sunlight, so also has that sunlight tarnished the image of a Greek man, or woman, as the archetype of collegiate ideals.

And so these new brothers have had to tolerate a different, and not altogether unironic, kind of struggle: they have to put up with other people giving them crap about being in a fraternity. From sad-but-true news briefs and Hollywood underdog bromides, the populace at large –perhaps some in this room – has inherited a partially informed skepticism about what we do here.

They think we take ourselves too seriously. They think we don’t take anything else seriously enough. They remember our mistakes. They dismiss our accomplishments. They attend our parties, enjoy our refreshments and laugh at us behind our backs. They accuse us of buying our friends.

It’s not the friends we’re buying. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

I joined the fraternity in the fall of my freshman year, 1995. And in my four years as an undergraduate there wasn’t a semester that went by that I didn’t wonder if it was the right decision.

At 18 years old I was a nerd caricature. Self-conscious, awkward and bookish – not even really smart, just bookish. Weirdly polite. Politely weird. I was the kind of guy who did really well with parents, teachers and administrators. But in acutely social situations, I turned into wallpaper. What would a fraternity do with me?

And what would a fraternity do for me? As an undergraduate clinical psychology major and aspiring therapist, I had little need for future business connections. I was already close to home and living in special-interest housing, so I wasn’t seeking another surrogate family. I had a girlfriend and I didn’t drink, so access to girls and parties wasn’t of much benefit.

I attended my first rush event in the Friel Lounge mainly because I didn’t have anything else to do; if cable television had been available on campus then, I probably would have been watching The Simpsons instead. And might possibly be watching The Simpsons now.

Throughout the rush experience, I connected with several of the brothers on a personal level and I was appropriately impressed by the civic and academic leadership: Students’ Association senators, Campus Times editors, National Merit Scholars, Rochester Early Medical Scholars, male cheerleaders. That’s straight out of the fraternity rush handbook: sell your brotherhood as a collection of charming overachievers.

But what I found most enticing – what sold me – was the unspoken, maybe accidental idea that when you bring a diverse group of people together, you can accomplish big things. Even the most introspective man of action can’t do big things by himself. He needs a team.

Delta Upsilon Brother Kurt Vonnegut created, in my favorite novel, Cat’s Cradle, a fictional religion-slash-philosophy called Bokononism. Followers believe that humanity “is organized into teams, teams that do God’s will without ever discovering what they are doing.” Such a team is called a karass. Vonnegut writes that one can try to discover the limits of their karass and the nature of the work that God has had it do ... but such investigations are bound to be incomplete.

It may be that Delta Upsilon is my karass. It could be that this very moment is the result of all that work. I wish I had known; I could have avoided so much exercise.

Along the way I certainly had my unforgettable brotherhood experiences, like pranks and road trips and wacky adventures. I have memories so rich and deep that I can still smell them. Most speakers and most charges will urge you to relish those moments, savor your youth, seize the day, blah blah blah. Okay, yes, definitely, do that.

I’m going to tell you what’s really important, what your dues are actually paying for: chapter meetings.

Here’s the big, dirty secret about Greek Life: the friendships, the parties, the fun stuff – you can get that anywhere. You don’t really need a fraternity for that. What Delta Upsilon offers is an opportunity for you to be a part of – and take responsibility for – something more important than yourself. It’s an active, participatory process, and it takes shape in the form of the chapter meeting.

Once a week, these guys spend the last flickering embers of their weekend in an antiseptic classroom somewhere, conducting the mundane, mechanical operation of the fraternity.⁶

They take roll. You probably thought, when you came to college, where most classes seem purely optional, that your days of roll call were over. In time, your compulsory attendance at these meetings will seem like something between a privilege and a punishment.

They comport themselves according to Robert’s Rules of Order and Parliamentary Procedure, a framework so arcane and labyrinthine that you can never really be sure if the president is just making things up. Each week, someone will unveil a new procedural maneuver to cut off debate; in response, someone in the brotherhood at large will, with all civility and respect, introduce a resolution instructing the president to eat his gavel.

They argue about trivial things, like whether this year’s rush T-shirt should be black or blue, or whether they should be buying traditional or barbeque-flavored potato chips for the Mardi Gras party. At some point during these ridiculous discussions, you will find yourself so bitterly frustrated by the guy sitting next to you right now that you begin to wonder if his acceptance to this school was a clerical error. Within two hours, you will have realized how stupid the argument was, and within 24 hours, you will have forgotten about the issue entirely.

They argue about important things, like budgets and dues and academic standards and risk management. There will be a handful of decisions every semester that affect this fraternity’s lifeblood and legacy. You will have to choose between the impassioned argument of this guy you respect, who says this thing, and this other guy you respect, who says this other thing. And you will accept the consequences of not only your choice, but the choices of your peers.

It can be an ugly, soul-crushing exercise. In Washington, we call it “making the sausage,” under the premise that nobody wants to see sausage or laws being made. But this experience is absolutely essential to the development of thoughtful citizenship and leadership. Because when you are tired and frustrated and bored and despairing, that is when your character is exposed. That is the man you are.

And when our founding principles – friendship, character, culture, justice – and our prescriptions – introspection, thought, creativity, action – are applied in those moments, that is the foundation of leadership. That is how you do big things. And that is how we build better men.

You know, I get frustrated when I hear people, usually politicians, say that “Washington is broken.” Certainly, our government has many problems, some institutional and some circumstantial. It doesn’t always do what we want it to do, and it doesn’t always do it efficiently. But it does what it’s supposed to do, which is take the will of the people and convert it into the rule of law. It’s not “broken,” it works. It’s just messy. And, as with any piece of complicated machinery, the operators need to know what they’re doing.

Someday, you will be those operators. Government, like this fraternity, like life, is just a series of meetings, and we are counting on you to show up. I ask you to be present for those meetings, watch and listen at those meetings, speak conscientiously at those meetings. Take what you learn in those meetings – take what you learn about yourself in those meetings, and apply it the outside world as teachers, as titans of industry, as parents, as leaders.

In the words of brother and president James A. Garfield, “I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.”

Thank you very much. Congratulations, Dikaia Upotheke, and justice for all.

"Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire."
- Abbie Hoffman


There was a rally this past weekend in Washington D.C., you might have heard. Or you might have guessed. There is a rally pretty much every weekend in Washington D.C., which serves as a sort of national soap box for every deeply felt, half-cocked, self-righteous grievance ranging from the socio-political to the metaphysiological. On Sunday evenings around here, the public wastebins are stuffed with picket signs.

This is the essence of American democracy. Whack-jobs with megaphones are the product and the price of capital-F Freedom. It is why living here -- in this nation and in this city -- is both inspiring and sort of depressing.

This latest rally was the brainchild of Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert,^[1] the Waldorf-and-Statler of modern American commentary. And the idea of their "Rally to Restore Sanity" was to sound the call for people cut back on the poisonous vitriol and villification that seems to characterize 21st century political discourse.

And of course, this is the essence of irony. "If we amplify everything, we hear nothing," Stewart said, via microphone-and-sound-system to 200,000 people on the mall, plus another two million or so households watching the nationwide simulcast. His point seems to be that free speech is great, as long as you don't say anything obnoxious and/or untrue. Unless you're a snarky comedian.

This is not really new terrain for Stewart, who has earned a sterling reputation for incisive, trenchant criticism of politicians and the media, quite clearly positioning himself as an eloquent voice of reason within the progressive movement. But then, when pressed on his civic philosophy and responsibilities, he shrugs his shoulders and says "It's just a fake news show! It's not real! Don't listen to me!"^[2]

And on Saturday, October 30, he gathered his followers on the National Mall and asked them to be nicer to each other. That's cool. Naive, yes, but in an adorable sort of way. It was only nine blocks from my home, so I went to be a part of it.

People have been asking me what it was like to be there. In a word: crowded. To simulate the experience, you can go into your backyard and dig a hole six feet into the ground and 18 inches in diameter. Get in the hole and then try to listen to your neighbor's TV.

You can view the entire rally/show in its entirety by clicking here. I won't bother offering any commentary on that, since I spent most of the time contorting my body so that I could try to listen to it. But this is my shorthand diary of the journey.

11:35 a.m. Meet up with D.I.L. and M.R.L. at the Metro Station. They were delayed getting in from the east side of the city because the trains were so packed full of rallygoers that they couldn't accomodate any more rallygoers.

11:45 a.m. Our first view of the city's omnipresent food trucks. We quickly dismiss the idea of a quick bite, as it was difficult to tell where the Red Hook Lobster Truck line ended and where the rally crowd began.

11:50 a.m. We enter the breach, assimilating with a hodge-podge of aging hippies, frat boys, left-wing activists, smart-ass hipsters, disaffected government flunkies and lost children.



People, people everywhere, and not a thought to think.


12:00 noon We are awash in a sea of these people. It takes us approximately ten minutes to move two feet.

12:05 p.m. We were supposed to meet up with J.R.R. and C.R. somewhere near 7th Street and Madison, but we are having difficulty keeping track of each other, much less finding anyone else in the crowd. He sends a text message to D.I.L. indicating that he is near "the big tree." Well, that narrows it down.

12:10 p.m. We are packed in like molecules of iron, and the guy behind me tells me he needs to get in front of me because "his friends are up there." Informed that there is zero space for him to get in front of me, he adopts a tone in stark contrast with the ethos of the rally he was attending.

12:15 p.m. An older woman inadvertently hits me in the head with a sign and apologizes profusely. "No problem," I reply. "It's my fault for coming down here."

We saw many, many signs pass through our small section of the crowd, embodying a number of different approaches:
- Meta ("This is a sign")
- Cinematic ("I'm calmer than you are, dude")
- Parodic ("Don't Read to Me", in the manner of "Don't Tread on Me")
- Ironic (a Christine O'Donnell campaign sign, with the oblique aside, "No Whacking")
- Topical ("My rent is reasonable")
- Worldly (Something in Arabic)
- Verbose ("Give me false dichotomies or give me death")
- Creepy ("When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth")

Don't take my word for it. This is just one of many other catalogues of interesting signage.

12:20 p.m. We reach the spot that would be our spot for the entirety of the show. If I stand on my tippy-toes and crain my neck, I can sort of make out the corner of a jumbotron screen.



This was me hoisting my camera aloft and snapping a photo of whatever.
If only I had been eight feet tall, I could have had this spectacular view.


12:30 p.m. Some guy on stage tries to start the wave. Of course, he is the only person on the mall who can actually see it.

12:40 p.m. In what would become a recurring problem, an ambulance proceeds up the street where there are 15,000 people already standing. When we somehow manage to squeeze in to let the ambulance pass, the empty space is rapidly filled by new people. This is roughly the same principle underlying plate tectonics, only that process is considerably less sweaty.

12:45 p.m. Someone is saying something on the microphone. Everyone asks the person next to them, "what is he saying?" which only makes our area louder and makes it more difficult to hear the person on the microphone, which makes the crowd even more vocally irritated.

12:50 p.m. Chants of "Lou-der! Lou-der!"

1:00 p.m. The show begins. My leg muscles begin the process of atrophy.

Throughout the show there were the usual oddities -- a baby stroller surfing the crowd, people climbing traffic lights, people threatening to pee right there if people didn't let them through -- just your basic Americana.

One of these days I'll actually watch the video so I can see what I was standing through. (I'll probably skip over the Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock train wreck.)

Election day is this Tuesday, so I'm not expecting sanity to be restored any time very soon. I admire the sentiment, I guess, I just think we should set our sights a little lower. How about a rally to restore sanitation? That would take care of all the signs, banners and buttons now littering the mall.

The precise etymology of the word "honeymoon" is a matter of some debate, but my trusty Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed., 1999) suggests that the term derives "from the idea that the first month of marriage is the sweetest." If my own honeymoon experience is any indication, the first month of marriage is also the hottest, the laziest and the most likely to be smothered in pineapple. (Perhaps we should call it the Honeyham, or the Hammymoon.)




This was only the beginning.

Click here for Part I.

Click here for Part II.

PART II: KAUAI

[Click here for Part I]


Day Five

A largely wasted day. We had just enough time in the morning for an unhurried breakfast buffet and our by-now very familiar packing ritual before the shuttle came to deliver us to the airport. Our schedule called for us to leave the Hyatt at 11 a.m., arrive at the airport at noon, take a 2 p.m. jet to Honolulu, arrive in Honolulu at 2:45, run to catch a 3 p.m. jet out of Honolulu, land at Kauai's Lihue Airport at 4 p.m., catch a shuttle to our hotel and arrive at the St. Regis Princeville Resort and Spa at 5 p.m.

The good news is that there were no delays, detours or disasters and our itinerary was executed with military precision.^[24] The bad news is that even this best-case scenario represented an unwelcome departure from the euphoric illusion that our honeymoon would be an uninterrupted state of recreation and relaxation. Instead we spent six hours right smack-dab in the middle of our vacation going through foot-stank security lines, eating preposterously overpriced fast food in terminal snack bars and sharing recycled, pressurized air with 200 middle-American game-show winners.

But rolling into the St. Regis restored the blush to our cheeks. The St. Regis chain of hotels, founded by New York City's famed Astor family and named after the patron saint of people who want to be millionaires, represents the apex of luxury; the sheer extravagance of the property itself is surpassed only by the lavishness of the proprietor's own imagination.^[25]

The Princeville Resort comes close to meeting those astronomical standards. Fresh flowers, meticulously arranged, graced every corner of the resort; brass and marble accented every seam; mahogany and soft leather upholstery filled the bar and lounge; bright, plush murals and tapestries lined the walls, illuminated by glass bead chandeliers.^[26] Just walking in there, in shorts and a tee shirt, I felt like a war refugee.^[27]




Upon stepping into the St. Regis lobby, the first thing anyone sees is the giant wall of tinted glass, framing a panoramic view of Hanalei Bay and the rainforest-covered Kalalau valley mountain ridge.
I assume that the glass is there to prevent overexcited guests from running through the lobby,
off the balcony and into the ocean.

We checked in and took the elevator down to the seventh floor; the whole building is carved into the side of a bluff on the dry side of Hanalei Bay, such that all guests must descend from the lobby to their rooms. Should I ever become a genius supervillain, I am totally commandeering the St. Regis as my evil lair.

We opened the door to Room 706 and we were instantly dumbstruck by the spectacular oceanfront view. Between shimmering sapphire and a watercolor sky was a lush mountain landscape dressed in a thousand deep shades of green, delicately lit by the setting sun.




Beyond the tastefully appointed room itself -- note the abundance of pillows and the complimentary bucket of champagne on the desk -- was a window to the most beautiful view I've ever seen:



Get a little closer ...



... Oh yeah.

We just stood there and drooled for a while^[28] before we realized we were hungry. J. was excited to explore the neighborhood, so she suggested we take a jaunt down to Hanalei Town, the closest thing to a "main drag" for 20 miles. As we had not rented a car, I called to the front desk to see if there was a shuttle or anything.

FRONT DESK: "A what, sir?"

ME: "A shuttle. Down to Hanalei Town? Kuhio Highway?"

FRONT DESK: "Oh, a shuttle." [She said the word "shuttle" with a half-laugh, like it was the most bourgeois thing she had ever heard, as if I had asked her if the restaurant served macaroni 'n' cheese.] "No sir, but we have a house car if you wish to reserve a pick-up."

ME: [Not at all understanding what that means.] "Excellent. We'd like to leave at about 6 p.m., please."

FRONT DESK: "You can just check in with the bell desk, sir. They'll help you make your arrangements."

ME: "Okay, thanks."

As it turns out, "house car" means "brand-new Mercedes sport utility wagon with private chauffeur for complimentary drop-offs and pick-ups around town." Stepping into the vehicle, I felt like Cinderella climbing into a pumpkin.




The 2010 Regismobile comes standard with limited powertrain warranty, 24/7 roadside assistance, buttery Corinthian leather, wish fulfillment package and soothing ukulele accompaniment.

Upon the suggestion of our driver, we elected to dine at the Hanalei Dolphin Restaurant and Fish Market, purported to have the best sushi on the island, with fish so fresh that you want to slap it with a sexual harassment lawsuit. We started with a zesty ceviche of Ono and Shrimp marinated in lime juice and followed that with a handful of maki rolls, but the grand prize went to the rainbow poke' martini, premium cuts of ahi tuna, salmon, whitefish and avocado served atop sushi rice in a martini glass.




J. enthusiastically goes to work on her martini, knowing full well
that she doesn't need to worry about driving home.

Sated by this mountainous feast, J. and I thought to take a stroll down the 100 or so yards of the Kuhio Highway that comprised the Hanalei business district. There was some sort of festival on the town square that evening, with several dozen families camped out on the public lawn watching surfing movies on a big screen.^[29]




The Hanalei mall. TOP LEVEL: physical therapy clinic, yoga studio, massage parlor.
BOTTOM LEVEL: Mexican/Brazilian Restaurant, beachwear boutique, tchotchke shop.
Note the conspicuous absence of Auntie Anne's Pretzels.

With the sun sinking below the horizon and the night quickly fading to starry black, we summoned our wheels to bring us back home. Okay, so, the day might have been a waste. But the evening was a revelation: Kauai was a nice, soft place to land.


Day Six

It was at this point that the trip slowed down considerably in terms of mental and physical activity, which was pretty much what I had in mind to begin with.^[30] And it makes sense that it worked out this way because -- as mellow as Maui may be -- Kauai establishes a new standard for relaxation. Compared to Washington D.C., southern California is laid-back, Maui is fully reclined and Kauai is resting in a persistent vegetative state. For two neurotic, uptight, materialistic, workaholic, hypersensitive midwestern overachievers-turned-East Coast drones like us, setting up camp in Kauai was like receiving an intravenous drip of Chilloutasec and Forgetitol.

We decided to begin the day by exploring the surrounding resort complex with a walk to the "nearby" Princeville shopping plaza. This basically meant winding our way past numerous quaint summer cottages, expertly manicured golf courses and myriad tropical gardens decorated with discarded Golden Globe awards.




We came across the Hanalei fire station on our walk to the Princeville shops. It was so hot,
I thought maybe if I loitered aggressively next to their sign they might hose me down.

After 20 minutes, the 90 degree heat and dubious pedestrian path had me wondering if the trip was worth it. Especially when we finally came upon the shopping plaza, the entirety of which was about the size of a Borders bookstore. Among the shops, however, was Lappert's Hawaii, the islands' preeminent local ice cream parlor.^[31] Although my small dish of "Mauna Kea's Secret" (white chocolate ice cream swirled with raspberry sorbet, chocolate chips and chocolate brownies) really hit the spot, it was difficult to relish the rich, creamy flavor when the punishing midday sun is intent on turning it into soup.

Upon our return to the hotel, we stopped by the concierge desk to see if we could reserve a private dining cabana for that evening. A cherubic woman named Leilani apologized and informed us that a large party had reserved all the cabanas and we were out of luck. (Future romantic vacationgoers: reserve this kind of thing early. Ideally right now.) We also wanted to get her advice about the sunset dinner cruise we had scheduled with Ray at the Hyatt in Maui.

Ray had informed us that the boat left from a nearby port and it would be no problem to get there without a car. Leilani let us know that Ray was an idiot and the marina was nearly two hours away, too far even for the Regismobile. Not wanting to rent another car -- or drive back after the cruise in the middle of the night, for that matter -- we had to bag that plan. It was frustrating, but it did give allow us the time and money to book a helicopter tour for later in the week.^[32]

Business complete, we hustled down to the recreation deck. At the uppermost level is a 5,000 square foot infinity pool, which -- if you look at it just right -- seamlessly empties into the ocean. Between the waters are several levels of cool, plush grass and a modest stretch of sugary sand.^[33]




The pool and beach area look even more serene without any people in it.

Tools of repose encircle the grounds: private cabanas with futons, seemingly designed specifically for seaside nookie; three separate hot tubs (one with bubbles, one without, and one for families); and the Nalu Kai Restaurant and Bar, featuring the island's very best $28 hamburger. Highly specialized masseuses, each trained in the release of tension from certain individual body parts, stand at the ready. Beefy valets, deeply tanned and possessed of a hypnotic calm, patrol the area offering fresh towels and sunscreen. Professional waiter-dudes and waiter-babes, exuding a sort of casual brah-ness, proudly escort frosty drinks in bright hues up and down the aisles like Mardi Gras parade participants. An oversized hammock, strung between two recumbent palm trees, swings invitingly in the corner of your eye.




The view of the hotel from the beach. The red circle (upper left) denotes the location of our room. The green private cabana (lower left) denotes the location of two mature ladies quite possibly getting it on.


J. and I claimed a pair of seats under one of the hotel's bright green umbrellas on the eastern rim of the grass. The weather was still undisputably warm, as the sun was still burning in its afternoon rage. But the pillowy clouds, collecting as they often do on the leeward side of the mountains, offered occasional shade as the trade winds steadily whispered cooler thoughts.




The view of the beach from my chaise lounge chair on little plot of grass.
Taking this photo was the closest I came to doing a sit-up during the whole trip.

For three solid hours we lay there, wallowing in masterful, premium-quality sloth, watching the best seconds of our lives pass satisfyingly by. And yet time seemed to stand still, becoming meaningless, as if we were in a place without time, without location and without life -- not heaven, but a state of beatific limbo, warm, wet and fuzzy, like the moment between your first and second kiss.

Yeah, it was hot. Luckily we had cold drinks to keep us hydrated, or at least well lubricated. J. ordered a Mai Tai, the traditional Polynesian cocktail composed of rum, orange curaçao, sweet syrup and lime juice, served on the rocks with a pineapple spear. I had something called an Orange Crush'd Cooler,^[34] the contents of which are unknown, although I think it was mostly schnapps and Starbursts.



Even by lax island resort standards, and next to J's Mai Tai (left), the Orange Crush'd Cooler (right)
is the sissiest drink I have ever ordered for myself. I'm pretty sure it came with a matching purse.

These drinks, as festively colored as they were, were no match for the oil painting sunset that bade us inside for dinner:



All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

- from A Sunset by Victor Hugo -


For dinner, we opted to try the Makana Terrace, the slightly less ritzy of the hotel's two major in-house restaurants, in that reservations merely prerequire a credit score rather than the full credit report. The food was excellent while the setting was sublime, in an unsettlingly gothic sort of way. We were seated on a porch facing the ocean, but with the thick cloud cover and the near-total absence of artificial light, we appeared to be surrounded by an atmosphere of blackness, like we were dining on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Another lovely day thus ended, we went to sleep almost nervous, wondering how our dreams could possibly improve on that.


Day Seven

An unconscionably lazy day in Kauai. Embodied practically criminal levels of sloth, along with the other six deadly sins: gluttony, avarice, sexiness, loitering, worshipping false idols and horseplay in the pool area.




POP QUIZ:
What is J. doing in this picture?

A. Applying sunscreen to her hands.
B. Rubbing her hands together excitedly in feverish anticipation of beach activities.
C. Applauding the gorgeous weather.
D. Enthusiastically executing a mosquito.

ANSWER: Trick question. She is actually praying for us to be stranded in Kauai for an extra week.


We woke up early -- still aided somewhat by our bodies' persistent allegiance to East Coast Time -- so that we could reserve the hotel's limited supply of complimentary snorkel equipment. Princeville cove itself is circumscribed by the Anini reef, which makes for calm waters and a cozy environment for marine life (as well as your more well-behaved Marines).

We were also keen to stake out some prime beachside real estate by getting a jump on the masses, but we found ourselves lucky to get the last pair of lounges between the beach and the pool;^[35] J. had to hold off would-be interlopers with only her fists and an ornery disposition, while I briefly considered marking our territory organically.

I can only guess that some of those people must have camped out the night before -- waiting to claim the coveted area triangulated between the bar, the beach and the hammock -- which is usually the sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior usually reserved for Star Wars fanatics, Duke University basketball fans and the Homeless. And of course I was jealous that I hadn't thought of it first.

In addition to the snorkel gear we carried with us a large canvas bag of provisions for a full day of leisurely abandon: sunscreen (one container Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry-Touch SPF 55 lotion and one container Neutrogena Fresh Cooling SPF 70 Body Mist Spray), breakfast (deli sliders from the coffee bar), books (for me, David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men; for J., Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love^[36]), music (my 4 GB Sansa Clip, loaded with music old and new, including OK Go's Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, a major disappointment) and Travel Scrabble.




The results of a round of Scoreless Scrabble, which is played without attention to points. This way,
there is no pressure and no hard feelings, because everybody wins. Especially me, who hit a bingo
with BESEIGED (lower right hand corner) and didn't get stuck holding the Q and the Z.

Our repose was mildly interrupted by some sort of contrived work-play event being held in honor of the Shire Pharmaceuticals "President's Club," which I can only guess is an honor roll for the corporation's most successful, productive and obnoxious sales representatives. Not only did the organizers erect a giant hospitality tent on the grassy knoll, commandeer all of the private dining cabanas [aha! the culprits] and pollute the area with generic reggae music, they overserved their beneficiaries free drinks and then unleashed them on the pool deck.




I amused myself by imagining that this said "hospital" instead of "hospitality," then
imagining sending multiple "President's Club" members there with snorkel-shaped bruises.

It took a measure of concentration to tune out these overstuffed, overblown, middle-aged middle-management apes and their spouses with their half-drunken carousing, and their shop talk, and their baleful chirping about how their iPads were running slow.

We escaped the cacophony for an hour or so when we paddled out toward the edge of the reef to scope out Natural Aquatic Beauty, for real this time. And we did see some fish. At least two, possibly even more, although it would be impossible to say whether we were just chasing the same yellow fish and the same silver fish all over the place. We did also see a black crab, some bleached coral and dozens of pulsating, tubular filter feeder things that looked disquietingly like breathing sea turds. It was certainly Aquatic, but frankly it was way too much Natural, not nearly enough Majesty.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of naps, only occasionally punctuated by reading, snacking and swimming. As body and brain sank into a pleasant atrophy, my only halfway intellectual exercise was the eyeball projection of the sun's arc across the sky and the calculated placement of our giant green umbrella so as to maintain maximum shade coverage at all times, thereby obviating additional sunscreen application.

As evening ascended, another magnificent sunset gradually ushered us from one dreamland to another.



If you think about it, a sunset is really nothing more than an illusion, created by the earth's rotation, that the sun is "disappearing," and the acute refraction of ultraviolet rays upon the earth's surface and atmosphere, bending visible light into a chromatograph of different colors. But, as illusions go, they're pretty great. Much better even than such pleasant illusions as "free lunch" or "friends with benefits."

Totally exhausted from momentarily glancing upward, and in the mood for a more romantic, intimate evening, we elected to eschew restaurants and simply order dinner from room service.^[37] My Kobe beef hamburger was excellent, but the kitchen somehow managed to screw up J.'s mango salad twice. To their credit, they not only apologized profusely and removed the entire meal charge from our bill, they also sent up a complimentary dessert and a fresh fruit platter with enough surplus mango to dress a whole goat in chutney.

Thoroughly sunned and stuffed, we slept peacefully, despite the conspicuous lack of actual physical exertion.


Day Eight

Bright the next morning, we hitched a ride on the Regismobile to the nearby Princeville Airport, where we were to check in with Sunshine Helicopters for our scheduled bird's-eye view of Natural Majesty.

We would be riding in an EC 130 B4 WhisperSTAR chopper, with capacity for six passengers (plus the pilot) and a Plexiglas cockpit designed to accommodate 180-degree views. Touted as "the most advanced technological sightseeing helicopter ever," in the event of emergency it will automatically play Gospel music on the in-flight DVD player. Though this was the first helicopter ride for either of us, we weren't scared or anything, at least not before the harrowing 20-minute safety lecture and our first up-close confrontation with the great metal beast.




The word "helicopter" comes from the Greek words helikos, meaning "spiral"
or "spinning," and pteron, meaning "blades of death."

It was at least refreshing to be able to board an aircraft without having to take off my shoes and walk through a metal detector. Each seat was equipped with headphones (so as to drown out the noise and receive communications from the pilot), a four-point harness and a barf bag. J. and I had both dropped some Dramamine on the way over but I remained and remain wary of any large, unnatural and dramatic movements.^[38]

Our takeoff was delayed only minimally by a fellow passenger, sitting next to me, who began to suffer an anxiety attack and had to be let off the helicopter, without a refund. It's difficult to describe the actual takeoff process: it wasn't just straight-up into the air; it was like being lifted off the ground slightly then whipped forward along a runway at an acute angle until we hovered, like Wile E. Coyote, over the steep gorge below.

First we climbed to the apex of the Kalalau valley mountain range and the summit of dormant Mount Waialeale. There, in one of the wettest places on earth,^[39] the altitude and the low-lying clouds produce a constant rainfall that feeds the dense green foliage and fuels the enormous waterfalls that stretch up to thousands of feet long.




Our pilot cavalierly disregarded the moral and ethical guidance of T.L.C., who famously
urged prospective explorers not to go chasing waterfalls and suggested that they instead
focus exclusively on the rivers and lakes to which the explorer is most accustomed.

From there we proceeded along the mountain ridge toward Waimea Canyon, the so-called "Grand Canyon of the Pacific." Measuring 10 miles long and nearly 3,500 feet deep, it is equivalent to an acne scar on the face of the actual Grand Canyon, which is 25 times longer and twice as deep. What it lacks in size, however, it compensates with a sharply contrasting colors, a thoroughly unique ecosystem and a really nice personality.




Waimea Canyon was created by the partial collapse of Kauai's surface four million years ago and
shaped by millennia of lava and water flow, making it the world's oldest and largest hot tub.

Moving through the canyon, over Kokee National Park and its 4,345 acres worth of hiking trails, we made a U-turn over the southwest corner of the island and hugged the shoreline on up to the Na Pali Coast, a series of awesome cliffs that once formed the shoulder of a prehistoric volcano and now comprises the island's northwest wall. The vertical ridges, caused by rivulets of lava that carved through the rock and then quickly cooled, are referred to as "the Cathedrals" and represent Hawaii's Official Guidebook Cover Photo Subject.




This photo, while probably our best of the Na Pali Coast, fails to capture its Holy Natural Frickin' Majesty, possibly because J. and I were frantically snapping pictures without worrying about focus
or glare or framing, while also trying to soak it all in on a real-time and panoramic basis, and
oh yeah, attempting to ward off the creeping sense of vertigo and motion sickness, which would have really put a damper on the whole trip, not to mention my shoes. (This picture is pretty good, though.)

After a quick sweep over Hanalei Bay, we returned to the airport, where I had to restrain J. from hijacking the helicopter and absconding to Bora Bora.




An aerial view of all Princeville (permanent population: ~1,600), with the St. Regis Hotel
descending front-and-center. The town is named for Prince Albert Kamehameha,
who was noted for his enjoyment of golf, surfing and womanservants.

Boarding our trusty Regismobile, we returned to the hotel and the beach for a few more hours of sun. Unfortunately, a leaden band of clouds had collected over the cove and parked there for most of the afternoon, lending the whole day a patina of silver.

J. was recognizably disappointed, as her dreams of frolicking in sun-dappled waters vanished, but I thought it was kind of nice. It wasn't quite as blisteringly hot outside without all the solar exposure, plus I didn't have to worry about coating myself head-to-toe with sunscreen every ten minutes. And anyway, it was kind of beautiful.




If there is a God, this is what I imagine He might look like.

We enjoyed a light lunch on the beach, sampling a broad and creative assortment of cocktails^[40] and reading our books as the trade winds gently sprayed us with a salty mist. And, wouldn't you know it, as soon as it was time for us to pack up and head to dinner, the sky broke open and a rainbow poured out.




FUN FACT: The University of Hawaii, based primarily in Honolulu, is the home of
the Rainbow Warriors, named for civilization's earliest gay-friendly fighting force.

For dinner, we chose Bar Acuda, a popular tapas and wine bar located in Hanalei, just down the street from the Dolphin. We had the Regismobile drop us off early so we could explore the town, which boasts its own sizable beach and fewer than 500 permanent residents, most of them surfers or surf-widows.

While the clouds had largely dissipated over Princeville, great gray altostratus continued to drift near the mountains that shadow Hanalei.^[41] As we walked past the through the neighborhoods off the main drag, we found ourselves caught in a light rain shower, which was not at all the kind of splashing that J. had in mind. Soon enough, she was sloshing at the restaurant, where our alluringly detached waitress suggested that we order five or six dishes per person, or basically everything on the menu.




J. tries an unexpectedly zesty glass of Malbec. Whenever she made a face like this …



… I only had to glance slightly upward and over her left shoulder.

Tempting as that was, we settled on about six dishes total, all of which were delectable, especially the seared sea scallop. I even tried to save room for dessert -- a banana-coconut milkshake at Bubba Burgers or some shaved ice at Shaved Ice Paradise -- but the sweet corn pizzeta did me in.




Hanalei Town's Dessert District.

And so another day of shameless self-indulgence gave way to our last night on Kauai, and dreams of excessive, extraordinary wealth, youthfully acquired without so much skill or effort as scratching a lottery ticket.


Day Nine

We held out as long as we could, but eventually we had to leave. Our final day in Hawaii made for a very long and awkward goodbye: We had to check out of our room by noon, but our shuttle wasn't scheduled to pick us up from the airport until 7:00 p.m. for a 10:00 p.m. flight. Efforts to obtain a late checkout were, unlike just about everything else at the hotel, fruitless.

If we had really thought about this in advance, we could have arranged for an earlier shuttle down to the south side of the island and spent the day there. Or we could have booked our helicopter ride or some other such excursion for that afternoon. Or we could have just paid for another night's stay, because, hey, screw it. Vacation.

But instead we tried to wring every last memory out of the place by spending the rest of the day on the beach, even though we couldn't really go in the water (lest we risk personal dampness for the next 18 hours) or bake in the sun (lest we reek of sunscreen and sauteed flesh for the next 18 hours). If I may use the kissing metaphor again, the day was like a kiss that goes on for way too long, so long that you start sweating and chafing and cramping up, and you don't even care anymore whether things move forward or stop altogether, you just want to do something else.

We found that it's a lot harder to relax when there's a timer counting down in your head, threatening to blow your vacation to smithereens. It was like trying to sleep through seven consecutive episodes of 24. Somehow, with the help of numerous tropical beverages and strategic avoidance of the sun's direct rays, we managed to lame-duck through the afternoon. We completed our stay, tearfully, at the poolside Nalu Kai Restaurant and Bar where we charged one final meal to our room.




Our Kauai footprint.

And then there was the hour ride to the airport, and two hours waiting at the airport, and the five hours to Phoenix, and the six hours to D.C., and the six hours that just plain vanished, and by the time J. and I returned home and were able to take another shower, it felt like August 2014.^[42] The idea of going back to work -- where there wasn't even so much as complimentary pineapple spears -- seemed incongruous and wrong.

But the nine days of honeymoon and the steady falling action of the final 18 hours put me to thinking about what a honeymoon really means.

Obviously, and most urgently, it is a reward to the new couple for surviving the wedding, which is its own special obstacle course and marital training ground with lessons in high-stakes negotiation, family diplomacy, financial management and color coordination. And we probably call it a "honeymoon" because it's the dessert at the end of a long and expensive meal.

More cynically, the honeymoon may be the last and perhaps only opportunity for the husband and wife to escape the relentless, punishing, tiresome responsibilities of adulthood. And it's called a "honeymoon" because you might as well try and enjoy the sweet taste while you can, before it permanently hardens and you're totally stuck.

But I've begun to think of the honeymoon as a kind of slack tub, where hot metal is quenched and hardened into steel, strengthening it for its ultimate purpose. True love, like steel, burns brightly at first: different elements slam together chemically; it is stoked in heat, awesome and dangerous; and then it is intently shaped into something meaningful. Eventually, it cools and becomes unbreakable, eternal.

I like to think of our honeymoon and our Hawaii -- with its fires and fire dancers, oceans and waterfalls, flora and fauna, mountains and valleys, sunshine and rain -- as this kind of consecration. As for what the word "honeymoon" really signifies, I'm still not quite sure. But I know that honey and true love are the two things that never spoil.




Blue skies ahead.

[27] I have to admit that the whole luxury hotel experience puts me in an uncomfortable position.

I genuinely value the superior appointments and dutiful service that comes standard with a five-star property like the St. Regis, the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, etc. I am the type of person who has no problem spending up to 40 percent of my vacation time simply enjoying the strange and sumptuous accommodations of a nice hotel room simply because it is not-home.

In our normal, day-to-day lives, activities like sleep, showers and meals are just things to do between doing other things. They become projects. Chores. In this context, they have not only lost their joyfulness, they have lost their meaning. Vacation is an opportunity to postpone our day-to-day lives, and in so doing, restore meaning and joy to these interstitial moments. Hotels act as agents of this renewal, allowing us to wake up without making the bed, take an extended bath in an oversized tub, leave the towel on the floor and eat breakfast in your bedroom without worrying about spilling anything on the carpet. And luxury hotels, beyond the typical high standards of cleanliness and tastefulness, are experts at creating these worry-free fantasy environments.

But ironically, the exceptionalism that makes luxury accommodations so appealing is also what makes me uncomfortable. I am often flummoxed by the promiscuous indulgence practiced by the upper class because my modest, self-sufficient, relatively Spartan ethos has calcified. Not only am I largely unfamiliar with, and unaccustomed to, The Finer Things in Life, my big-city life has trained me to be leery and cynical of anyone who treats me too nicely. I'll handle my own bags, thankyou.

And let's face it, if you are a person with any kind of self awareness or sense of sympathy at all, or possessed of any notion of basic human equality, you quickly realize that having your ass kissed is (at best) awkward and (at worst) demeaning to both parties, and after a while it becomes difficult to take seriously, much less sincerely. I understand that these employees are meticulously screened, rigorously trained and strictly required to fulfill their each guest's wildest expectations, and because of this they are perhaps sufficiently compensated for their servility even beyond the algorithmic gratuity system currently in place [See Footnote No. 13]. But this realization only intensifies my suspicion that their outward demonstration of thoughtfulness is little more than the fulfillment of a contractual obligation – or worse, a discrete financial transaction – and while they may purport to fetch me a cocktail with great pleasure, they are in fact cursing my lazy ass while counting dollar bills in their heads.

Of course, these hotels actively market their properties as extremely exclusive – practically prohibitive – through both their pricing structure (i.e., expensive room rates and inflated menu prices) and their house rules (i.e., mandatory dress codes and strict procedures). This is initially rather gratifying, not only knowing that you have been accepted as part of a rarified social class but also knowing that the poor, huddled, yearning masses – the ones who wear fanny packs, fart in the hot tub and complain impertinently about their infected lymph nodes – are staying somewhere else. But then you realize that, despite your newfound nobility, you are still part of a sub-caste that exists below the cream of the V.I.P. crop, the princes and the CEOs and the movie stars, who have their own private cabanas, butlers and Swedish masseuses. And then you realize that not even St. Regis-level countermeasures can keep out some substantial contingent of the poor, huddled, yearning masses, who are probably there because they robbed a bank or collected enough Camel Cash or something. And then, finally, you realize that there isn't really anything separating you from the poor, huddled, yearning masses, and the four or five genuinely wealthy and powerful people staying at the hotel are probably looking at you, with your doughy-white body in your cheap-ass Wal-Mart swimming trunks, and wondering how you got past security. So the whole thing turns out to be pretty much the same as being in reality, except everything costs three times as much, and now you're even more self-conscious because you feel trapped between being a clueless rube and a smug jackass.

If you allow yourself to think that way, it almost doesn't seem worth it, until and except for the quiet moments – on the private beach, or between the 700-thread-count sheets, or soaking in the oversized bathtub – when you look around and realize that those quiet moments are the best life has to offer, and they just don't happen at the Red Roof Inn. It's better this way, even if not by much.